{"id":17101,"date":"2025-04-03T15:38:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/overlooked-no-more-katharine-mccormick-force-behind-the-birth-control-pill\/"},"modified":"2025-04-03T15:38:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:38:00","slug":"overlooked-no-more-katharine-mccormick-force-behind-the-birth-control-pill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/overlooked-no-more-katharine-mccormick-force-behind-the-birth-control-pill\/","title":{"rendered":"Overlooked No More: Katharine McCormick, Force Behind the Birth Control Pill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\"><em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\">This article is part of <\/em><a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/overlooked\" title=\"\"><em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\">Overlooked<\/em><\/a><em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\">, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Katharine Dexter McCormick, who was born to a life of wealth, which she compounded through marriage, could have sat back and simply enjoyed the many advantages that flowed her way. Instead, she put her considerable fortune \u2014 matched by her considerable willfulness \u2014 into making life better for women.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">An activist, philanthropist and benefactor, McCormick used her wealth strategically, most notably to underwrite the basic research that led to the development of the birth control pill in the late 1950s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Before then, contraception in the United States was extremely limited, with bans on diaphragms and condoms. The advent of the pill made it easier for women to plan when and whether to have children, and it fueled the explosive sexual revolution of the 1960s. Today, the pill, despite some side effects, is the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/products\/databriefs\/db388.htm\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">most widely used<\/a> form of reversible contraception in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">McCormick\u2019s interest in birth control began in the 1910s, when she learned of <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1966\/09\/07\/archives\/margaret-sanger-is-dead-at-82-led-campaign-for-birth-control-mrs.html\" title=\"\">Margaret Sanger<\/a>, the feminist leader who had been jailed for opening the nation\u2019s first birth control clinic. She shared Sanger\u2019s fervent belief that women should be able to chart their own biological destinies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The two met in 1917 and soon hatched an elaborate scheme to smuggle diaphragms into the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Diaphragms had been banned under the Comstock Act of 1873, which made it a federal crime to send or deliver through the mail \u201cobscene, lewd or lascivious\u201d material \u2014 including pornography, contraceptives and items used for abortions. (The law, which still prohibits mailing items related to abortions, has received <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/publichealth.jhu.edu\/2024\/how-the-comstock-act-threatens-abortion-rights\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">renewed attention<\/a> since the federal right to abortion was <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/06\/24\/us\/roe-wade-overturned-supreme-court.html\" title=\"\">overturned<\/a> in 2022.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">McCormick, who was fluent in French and German, traveled to Europe, where diaphragms were in common use. She had studied biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was able to pose as a scientist in meetings with diaphragm manufacturers. \u201cShe purchased hundreds of the devices and hired local seamstresses to sew them into dresses, evening gowns and coats,\u201d according to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2011\/02\/22\/196980\/a-mind-of-her-own\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">a 2011 article<\/a> in M.I.T. Technology Review. \u201cThen she had the garments wrapped and packed neatly into trunks for shipment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She and her steamer trunks made it through customs. If the authorities had stopped her, the article said, they would have found \u201cnothing but slightly puffy dresses in the possession of a bossy socialite, a woman oozing such self-importance and tipping her porters so grandly that no one suspected a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">From 1922 to 1925, McCormick smuggled more than 1,000 diaphragms into Sanger\u2019s clinics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After her husband died in 1947, she inherited a considerable amount of money, and she asked Sanger for advice on how to put it to use advancing research into contraception. In 1953, Sanger introduced her to <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/www.nytimes.com\/learning\/general\/onthisday\/bday\/0409.html\" title=\"\">Gregory Goodwin Pincus<\/a> and <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1991\/06\/07\/obituaries\/mc-chang-scientist-dies-at-82-a-developer-of-birth-control-pill.html\" title=\"\">Min-Chueh Chang<\/a>, researchers at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Massachusetts, who were trying to develop a safe, reliable oral contraceptive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She was excited by their work and provided almost all the funding \u2014 $2 million (about $23 million today) \u2014 required to develop the pill. She even moved to Worcester to monitor and encourage their research. Pincus\u2019s wife, Elizabeth, described McCormick as a warrior: \u201cLittle old woman she was not. She was a grenadier.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Food and Drug Administration <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/media\/110456\/download\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">approved the pill<\/a> for birth control in 1960.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Katharine Moore Dexter was born into an affluent, socially activist family on Aug. 27, 1875, in Dexter, Mich., west of Detroit. The town was named for her grandfather, Samuel W. Dexter, who founded it in 1824 and maintained an Underground Railroad stop in his home, where Katharine was born; her great-grandfather, Samuel Dexter, was Treasury secretary under President John Adams.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Katharine and her older brother, Samuel T. Dexter, grew up in Chicago. Their mother, Josephine (Moore) Dexter, was a Boston Brahmin who supported women\u2019s rights. Their father, Wirt Dexter, was a high-powered lawyer who served as president of the Chicago Bar Association and as a director of the Chicago, Burlington &amp; Quincy Railroad. He also headed the relief committee after the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/chicagocop.com\/history\/historical-events\/the-great-chicago-fire\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Great Chicago Fire<\/a> of 1871 and was a major real estate developer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He died when Katharine was 14. A few years later, her brother died of meningitis while attending Harvard Law School. Those early deaths pointed her toward a career in medicine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She attended M.I.T. and majored in biology, rare achievements for a woman of that era. She arrived with a mind of her own, and successfully challenged a rule that female students had to wear hats at all times, arguing that they posed a fire hazard in the science labs. She graduated in 1904 and planned to attend medical school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But by then, she had started dating the dashing Stanley Robert McCormick, whom she had known in Chicago and who was an heir to an immense fortune built on a mechanical harvesting machine that his father had invented. As a young lawyer, he helped negotiate a merger that made his family a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/americanbusinesshistory.org\/whatever-became-of-international-harvester\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">major owner of International Harvester<\/a>; by 1909, it was the fourth largest industrial company in America, measured in assets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">McCormick persuaded Katharine to marry him instead of going to medical school. They wed at her mother\u2019s ch\u00e2teau in Switzerland and settled in Brookline, Mass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-8\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But even before they married, he had showed signs of mental instability, and he began experiencing violent, paranoid delusions. He was hospitalized with what was later determined to be schizophrenia, and remained under psychiatric care \u2014 mostly at <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.com\/2016\/12\/21\/montecitos-riven-rock\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Riven Rock,<\/a> the McCormick family estate in Montecito, Calif. \u2014 until his death. She never divorced him and never remarried. They had no children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Katharine McCormick spent decades mired in personal, medical and legal disputes with her husband\u2019s siblings. They battled over his treatment, his guardianship and eventually his estate, as detailed in a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/publications\/prologue\/2007\/summer\/mccormick.html\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">2007 article in Prologue Magazine<\/a>, a publication of the National Archives. She was his sole beneficiary, inheriting about $40 million ($563 million in today\u2019s dollars). Combined with the $10 million (more than $222 million today) she had inherited from her mother, that made her one of the wealthiest women in America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-9\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As her husband\u2019s illness consumed her personal life, McCormick threw herself into social causes. She contributed financially to the suffrage movement, gave speeches and rose in leadership to become treasurer and vice president of the <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/collections\/national-american-woman-suffrage-association\/articles-and-essays\/the-national-american-woman-suffrage-association\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">National American Woman Suffrage Association<\/a>. After women won the right to vote in 1920, the association evolved into the League of Women Voters; McCormick became its vice president.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-10\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 1927, she established the Neuroendocrine Research Foundation at Harvard Medical School, believing that a malfunctioning adrenal gland was responsible for her husband\u2019s schizophrenia. She provided funding for two decades and acquired an expertise in endocrinology that later informed her interest in the development of an oral contraceptive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">After the F.D.A. approved the pill, McCormick turned her attention to funding the first on-campus residence for women at M.I.T. When she studied there, women had no housing, one of several factors that discouraged them from applying. \u201cI believe if we can get them properly housed,\u201d she said, \u201cthat the best scientific education in our country will be open to them permanently.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">McCormick Hall, named for her husband, opened on the institute\u2019s Cambridge campus in 1963. At the time, women made up about 3 percent of the school\u2019s undergraduates; today, they make up about 50 percent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By the time she died of a stroke on Dec. 28, 1967, at her home in Boston, McCormick had played a major role in expanding opportunities for women in the 20th century. She was 92.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-11\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Apart from a short article in The Boston Globe, her death drew little notice. The later obituaries of the birth-control researchers she had supported did not mention her role in their achievement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In her will, she left $5 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation (more than $46 million today) and $1 million to Pincus\u2019s laboratories (more than $9 million today). Earlier, she had donated her inherited property in Switzerland to the U.S. government for use by its diplomatic mission in Geneva. She left most of the rest of her estate to M.I.T.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/03\/obituaries\/katharine-mccormick-overlooked.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[4183,552,441,5380,5382,5379,397,268,5381,550,150],"class_list":["post-17101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-biographical-information","tag-birth-control-and-family-planning","tag-deaths-obituaries","tag-katharine-1875-1967","tag-margaret","tag-mccormick","tag-philanthropy","tag-research","tag-sanger","tag-women-and-girls","tag-womens-rights"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Overlooked No More: Katharine McCormick, Force Behind the Birth Control Pill - World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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